The city of a thousand trades has been taking its place on a world stage over the centuries and modern-day Birmingham is no exception.
But whereas engineering and manufacturing once ruled the roost, these days it is the city’s cultural innovators and pioneers who are coming to the fore and helping to lead the way forward.
Rhubarb-Rhubarb, the annual celebration and showcase of some of the world’s best photographers, is breaking new ground again this year during its run from July 27-30 with an auction of work by some leading names.
Rhonda Wilson, Creative Director of the festival, who was awarded an MBE by the Queen in the New Year's Honours List for her services to photography and international trade, believes the July 29 auction sticks close to the principles of both the festival and the city it calls home.
With almost 40 lots so far donated by the likes of Han Sungpil, Vee Speers, Arlene Gottfried and Sian Borrell, the auction fittingly brings the work of photographers drawn from the four corners of the globe to one of Birmingham’s truly iconic buildings. Fort Dunlop is the former tyre manufacturing plant and landmark site alongside one of the busiest stretches of motorway in Europe – the M6 – and is regarded as a key gateway to the city. It is currently undergoing a multi-million pound renovation by Urban Splash, themselves pioneers of modern urban regeneration, and it will form an evocative and spectacular backdrop for the auction. “We’ve decided to hold this at Fort Dunlop, as it has a history of exporting to the four corners of the world,” explained Rhonda Wilson. “So it’s perfect."
“As we will be entertaining around 62 international reviewers, from the top galleries and agencies from Europe, America and the Far East, plus innumerable photographers from countries as far as China and South Africa, we felt it was an appropriate way to celebrate the festival, those taking part and Birmingham itself. “We’ve designated this a year of photography and international trade, which will focus on Rhubarb developing new markets and hopefully a new home here in the city.”
She is hoping to boost the festival coffers through the auction, enabling the festival to continue its remarkable expansion and ability to attract the photography world to Birmingham.
She added that esteem in which the festival is held internationally was evident in the willingness of photographers to donate work to the auction, which will be led by the chairman of Christie’s Hugh Edmeades.
These include Han Sungpil, the Korean-born artist who began his career in photography while studying at the Chung-Ang University, Fine Arts Photography department in Seoul. He has had exhibitions in Korea, Japan, Spain, the UK and US. His work Travelog 001 has a guide price of £800.
Another to donate work is Vee Speers, the Australian fine-art photographer who has drawn on the romantic decadence of Paris nightlife in the 1920s and 30s for her work.
Speers lived near the infamous Rue St Denis red-light district in Paris for 14 years, to create her edgy photos that play with seduction, sensuality and femininity. Walking the Croc has a reserve of £700.
Those attending the auction will also get the chance to bid for Baby in Big Paper Hat (£410 reserve) by critically acclaimed Arlene Gottfried. Born and living in New York, Gottfried freelances for publications including The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Life, and The Independent. Her work has been exhibited at the Leica Gallery, New York and Tokyo, and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, and is collected by the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the New York Public Library and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris.
Gottfried is a photographer with an eye and a mind on the city streets - an “insider” with an ability to capture images of life that are raw, real, hard-edged, and caustic and at the same time affectionate, funny, and loving. Deceptively like snapshots, her photographs always manage to reflect the city she calls her home and inspiration. British-born Sian Bonnell works with found objects and household articles; placing them out of context within the rural and coastal environment where she lives, as well as constructing imagined landscapes in the studio.
Her work has become highly collectable and desirable and bidders will get a rare chance to purchase one of her pieces – Waterworks # 6, 2000, with a guide of £450 - at the Fort Dunlop event.
These interventions are then photographed as documents not just of the object but of an event. Rhonda Wilson believes the opportunity to bid for such work will prove irresistible to those attending the festival. The staging of the auction has added importance for the Birmingham-born photographer, writer, curator and publisher, who is working to safeguard the festival’s future in the city. She is hoping the auction, plus the interest generated by her MBE award, will add further weight to her efforts to keep Rhubarb-Rhubarb a Birmingham event.
“This festival is not about me,” she added. “It’s been created and developed by all the people who believe in the power of creativity and that Lunar Men philosophy that Birmingham is a place to come and share and realise ideas.”
* For more information on this year’s Rhubarb-Rhubarb festival go to www.rhubarb-rhubarb.net. Further details of the July 29 auction at Fort Dunlop, Birmingham, are also available on the website, or by emailing: info@rhubarb-rhubarb.net. Alternatively, contact 0121 773 7889.
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